FriendCrib Mag
The Emo Songs on Every Profile
Emo songs ruled MySpace profiles in the 2000s, from Dashboard Confessional to My Chemical Romance. People still sing every word.
Written by Daniel Rivera · 56k: ~1 min
If you ever wrote a lyric on your hand or picked a profile song to match a breakup, you were listening to emo. Emo was emotional punk and rock that went mainstream in the early and mid-2000s, and its songs were the default soundtrack of profile pages and away messages, and it filled burned CDs too. The names you saw most were Dashboard Confessional and Jimmy Eat World, with Taking Back Sunday close behind, then Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance on top. Fans quoted lyrics everywhere, dressed in black with side bangs and argued about which band was really emo. The music never went away, and in the 2020s the same fans packed nostalgia festivals and club nights built around those songs.
What made a song emo?
An emo song had big feelings and loud guitars, with lyrics that sounded like they came straight out of someone's diary. Breakups and heartbreak were the main topics. Friendship and feeling misunderstood came next. The singing often went from quiet to shouting inside one song, and the choruses were made to be screamed in a car or a crowd. Plenty of those songs reached people first through a TV drama, like finding new bands on The O.C..
The word itself caused endless arguments. Bands often said they weren't emo, fans said they definitely were, and older fans insisted the real emo bands were the ones nobody had heard of. Nobody ever won that fight.
The albums everyone had
A handful of albums seemed to be on every shelf. Dashboard Confessional's "The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most" came out in 2001. Jimmy Eat World released "Bleed American" the same year, and after the September 11 attacks the album was re-released under the band's own name. Taking Back Sunday's "Tell All Your Friends" arrived in 2002, and Brand New's "Deja Entendu" in 2003.
Then the bigger names took over. Fall Out Boy's "From Under the Cork Tree" came out in 2005, and My Chemical Romance released "The Black Parade" in 2006, with its marching-band look and giant choruses. By then emo wasn't underground anymore. It was on TRL and the radio, and if you remember racing home from school, you probably saw a few of these videos before you ever heard the albums.
Song titles longer than the songs
Some bands, Fall Out Boy above all, loved ridiculously long song titles. "I Slept with Someone in Fall Out Boy and All I Got Was This Stupid Song Written About Me" was a real track name. So was "Our Lawyer Made Us Change the Name of This Song So We Wouldn't Get Sued." Fitting those titles on a burned CD in Sharpie took real planning, and the end of the title usually got squeezed into tiny letters along the edge. If you ever made one of those discs yourself, burning mix CDs on LimeWire will bring it all back.
Dashboard Confessional unplugged
In 2002, Dashboard Confessional played MTV Unplugged. The crowd knew every word and sang so loudly that they nearly drowned out Chris Carrabba, the singer. It became one of the most famous moments of the era and showed how much fans connected with the songs.
The rise and fall of 2000s emo, told by the people who lived it. Watch on YouTube
Emo songs as profile songs
Emo and pop punk songs were everywhere on profiles. Picking one said something about your mood, your heartbreak or the person you hoped would visit your page. It was a lot like picking any profile song, just with more feelings.
Lyrics also became away messages and headlines, and sometimes whole screen names. One line from a Taking Back Sunday chorus could say more than a whole paragraph you wrote yourself, and it saved you from admitting the feeling was yours. Many of those same bands built their audience through band pages and shows like Warped Tour.
The look
Emo had a look as recognizable as the music. Black clothes and band shirts, studded belts, skinny jeans and checkered shoes. The hair was straightened and swept over one eye. Plenty of kids bought their first band shirt at a mall store and wore it until it fell apart. The hair alone took a straightener and a lot of product every morning, and the bangs still never stayed put in the wind.
The comeback
Emo fans grew up, but they didn't forget the songs. Club nights dedicated to emo and pop punk started popping up in the 2010s, where grown adults screamed every word to the songs they loved in high school. In 2022, a festival called When We Were Young brought many of the era's biggest bands to Las Vegas, and demand was so high that extra dates were added.
The other bands in the mix
Not every song on a profile came from the biggest names. Hawthorne Heights hit with "Ohio Is for Lovers" in 2004, on the label Victory Records, and its screaming parts became a test of whether your parents would make you turn it down. Paramore released "Riot!" in 2007, and "Misery Business" was on what felt like half the profiles anyone visited that summer. Jimmy Eat World's "The Middle" had already become a radio hit back in 2001, with a video full of people at a party in their underwear and one kid who stayed dressed.
A lot of these bands built their fans online before radio ever played them. They posted songs to their own profiles, answered comments, then added fans as friends. You found a new band in the Top 8 of a band you already loved, then clicked through to that band's Top 8, and kept going until two in the morning. Some of those bands broke up before anyone outside their town noticed, and their songs lived on in profile players for years. Finding bands before algorithms was slow, and that was half the fun.
The shows mattered just as much. Small all-ages clubs and VFW halls gave fans a place to sing every word back at the stage, and the Warped Tour did the same on a bigger scale. Plenty of people met their best friends in a line outside a venue.
Lyrics on your Converse and other habits
- Writing lyrics on your hand or your Converse
- Long song titles that didn't fit on a CD label
- Arguing about whether a band was "really" emo
- Crying in the car to a song that wasn't even sad
- The first time you heard "The Black Parade" all the way through
- Changing your profile song every time you had a new feeling
Still not over it
Plenty of those songs still hit as hard as they did at sixteen. Make a crib, set your favorite as your profile song and leave the lyrics in your headline. Nobody here will judge.
- #1 Dashboard Confessional
- #2 Jimmy Eat World
- #3 Taking Back Sunday
- #4 Brand New
- #5 Hawthorne Heights
- #6 Fall Out Boy
- #7 Paramore
- #8 My Chemical Romance
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Picking a Profile Song Was a Big Deal
Set your favorite emo song as your profile song. Nobody will judge.
Free, 18+ and no algorithm. Pick a profile song, rank your Top 8 and leave your friends comments.
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